


what i left behind

by Upperstories



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, implied bodily harm, platonic found family hours are all day every day here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:34:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Upperstories/pseuds/Upperstories
Summary: It wasn’t so bad, being exorcised.
Relationships: Beetlejuice & Adam Maitland & Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz
Comments: 46
Kudos: 436





	what i left behind

**Author's Note:**

> first fic in a while! This is heavily inspired by an art piece I posted on tumblr a few weeks ago. Who would've thought I'd get invested in a musical about a demon with mommy issues am i right????
> 
> Beta-read by the amazing @geusejuice!!!

It wasn’t so bad, being exorcised. 

There were worse ways to go. Trapped within a ring of blessed salt in a basement was the first that came to mind. Slowly worn away by the pricking of thousands of millions of needle-like prayers placed into every particle of bleached white salt. _Eugh_. Being trapped into an immobile vessel and thrown into cleansing fire-- although not a permanent end --would’ve sucked too. It took a demon so long to recover from shit like that. And then there was Holy Water! Oh, Holy Water stung like a  _ bitch _ . Worked fast too, cut right through the very fabric of your being and washed it away into nothing*. Not fun. 

But this? This was nothing. 

Literally, nothing.

Crossing the threshold into the Well of Lost Souls had been horrifying before actually stepping through, overcome with fear and pain and endless pleading to go home,  _ home, please let me go home I’m sorry ma I’ll be good I promise _ , but then the band-aid was ripped off. And now all that was left was a light, airy emptiness. Like falling through the ice and succumbing to the freezing lake below. He couldn’t feel anything. He no longer needed to. The lack of existence washed over all of his being. Numb. Free. 

It was almost a relief, especially when he thought back on all the times Juno used to threaten him with it. One of his earliest memories, between the cold rooms, and colder words, was her walking him down the endless corridors of the Netherworld Soul Assembly Rooms, making him stand in front of The Door. Hallowed in green light. Cold to the touch. He’d listen to wails of the damned until he couldn’t listen to anything else. He’d watch the ragged souls crumble before his very new eyes until everything blurred and he couldn’t look anymore. He couldn’t remember when he stopped crying at the sight of it, day after day, trailing behind her to her office, biting his nails to keep from screaming. Screams made her mad. 

But he wasn’t screaming now. 

He wasn’t much of anything anymore.

He was disappearing. All he could see was an endless black voice, and himself. He wasn’t as solid as he remembered behind before, all bright greens and purples thanks to the nice sweater Lydia had gotten him. His first ever Hanukkah gift. The color sloughed off him and vanished into the emptiness that surrounded him. Absorbed him. It was a shame, really. He liked the stupid sweater. 

Voices screamed in his head, distantly, that this a very bad thing. That he needed to break free. To summon a portal. To go back. To do something. 

But he never felt freer than he did now. Free from pain. Free from thought. Free from rejection and loss and aching and wanting. Free from his mother ever finding him and hurting him again. 

Sure, there would never be another Hanukkah at Lydia’s house. No more early mornings where he could be Charles’ own personal alarm clock. No more making lunches with Delia, or sabotaging lunches with Delia not suspecting a thing. No more hearing Barbara hum along to St. James Infirmary while dusting the rafters. No more trying to distract Adam from working on his stupid town model. No more pranks with Lydia. No more laughter. No more anything. 

The thousands of voices screaming in his head were silenced with a louder, more damning thought. The thought had the voice of his mother. 

They’re better off without you.

As he sunk into oblivion, weighed down by that thought, he found himself entirely unable to argue.

* * *

Lydia had a long list of things she hated. 

She wasn’t like the Maitlands, who found themselves lacking in the anger department. She wasn’t even like her father or Delia, who had both become successful at one of the many things adults loved to do: suppressing their own emotions. When Lydia hated something, she hated it with a passion, with endurance, and with style. 

She hated broccoli, bright white or yellow Sunday clothes, The Home Shopping Network, and for reasons she would never expand upon, not even to her therapist, toothpicks. 

But right now, most of all, she hated Juno Shoggoth.

It was gratifying, almost cathartic, clinging to Barbara as they and the rest of the Maitland-Deetz family rode Big Sandy straight through the Netherworld and into Juno’s office. How Barbara had managed to wrangle the sandworm in half the time Beetlejuice had the last time, no one really saw room to unpack. But she’d done it, and they’d found Juno and they were going to get Beetlejuice back. 

She wanted to feel joy when her father manhandled the ruler of the Netherworld, demanding answers. She wanted to feel happy when Delia slapped her, or when Adam forewent any pretense of having manners by calling her a straight up bitch to her face. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even feel happy when Barbara sicced Sandy on her, the demonic mother from hell more of a chew toy to the erratic sandworm than dinner. 

She refused to be happy until they got her friend back. 

It wasn’t fair. It just was not fair. They’d all been so happy just a little while ago. She’d finally managed to convince all of the functional adults of the household to let her friend stay with them and then, this happens? After all of his hard work? After he’d apologized to Dad and Delia? After he’d warmed his way back into the Maitland’s afterlives? After she’d given him that dumb, tacky sweater? It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t he couldn’t just be gone like that--

“I see him!” said Barbara, wrestling with the large iron padlock, attached the a large, steel door. “She-- she locked him in here!”

It took a little coaxing and a swift  _ whap  _ upside her second head, but Charles managed to dislodge a large iron key from Sandy’s gullet. 

Without so much as a thought, Lydia grabbed the bile-sodden key, undid the mammoth lock, and threw the door open. 

* * *

_ Heaven _ . 

He must’ve made it to heaven. 

Heaven to him was endless softness. No hard edges, no hard stares. No hard truths. Just cotton and wool and fresh linen-- and lots of other soft things that he never knew existed because he never got to feel them before. 

Something warm and tender and soft caressed his face, then his chest, then his arms, and then all of him completely and he couldn’t help but smile. Behind closed eyelids that would soon vanish with the rest of him. Through the fog of empty numbness, the warmth seeped through him and tugged something fierce at the heartstrings demons weren’t supposed to have. Angels were holding him, telling him it was finally over, that he was going home. A part of him know that he was simply hallucinating, that home was a place he’d never been to, had never known, but it felt so good to hear them say it anyway. 

He squinted his eyes, tried to thank them, and choked. 

It was too much. It was too much to so much as dare hope for. 

But there they were. 

Adam. Barbara. 

Lydia.

_ They’d come to bring him home.  _

* * *

He was so pale. 

_ Well, of course he’s pale _ , Adam scolded himself.  _ He’s dead.  _

But this gave the word an entirely new meaning. What was once a vibrant trashy splash of green and purple and freckles of mold and moss for personality was a husk. He was nowhere near the state of the souls around them, crumbling and fading like ash in the wind, but he was not in any sort of good way. He was practically gray. And floating freely, no solid world around him to manipulate at his will, no sound in the vacant ether beyond whispered pleas and hushed moans, he looked so much smaller than when they’d first met so long ago. 

No bravado. No gravitas. Just a man. Just Lydia’s friend. Just Lawrence. 

Lydia sobbed, her voice muffled by the force of the emptiness around them, like they were underwater. Deep deep, on the ocean floor, where nasty things with so many teeth and glowing eyes resided. She grabbed Beeltejuice by the collar of his graying sweater and shook him. When he didn’t move, she buried his face into his chest and tried to scream, but no sound came out because of the pressure. 

Barbara, face pinched in fear and dread and something like hope, gently cupped the demon’s face, brushing her pottery-worn thumbs under his deeply bruised eyes. She whispered that everything would be fine. She didn’t force the sound out. Maybe that’s why it came out so clearly. 

Adam, forcing the emptiness around him to clear out, grabbed Beetlejuice’s arms and gripped with tightly, pulling them man close to all three of them. Together they hugged him tight free floating and weighted down by the despair around them. Adam tugged the line, Delia had wrapped around his waist, and felt them all be pulled back towards Juno’s office, the door floating stationary above them. So close and yet so far. The light at the ocean’s surface. 

“Beetlejuice?”

Adam turned back towards the others, just in time to hear Barbara’s hopeful whispers breaking through the heavy, hopeless force around them. The demon was finally opening his eyes. They lacked the spark they once had, the mischievous glint smothered under all that he had endured. But they were open. He was ok. They hadn’t been too late. 

“ _ \--yhhhou-- _ ” he choked, low and foreign in its lack of volume, saturated with a feeling so broken that it made Adam want to cry, “ _ y-you c-came... ba--hhack f-for me… _ ”

* * *

It was like waking up from a dream. Or from being frozen. Or drowned. 

Everything was too bright and too vibrant and too much and he was going to be sick. Could he even get sick? He didn’t care. He felt so awful, like he was falling apart at the seams.

And yet he clung to the warm--even in death, Adam and Barbara were so warm-- bodies around him and tried to do everything in his drained power not to pass out. 

He must’ve failed, because one minute he was clinging to Lydia and the next he was being carried in Charles’ thick, study arms. The world passed around him in a blur and he felt too many things at once to make any sense of it. 

He wasn’t ready to pass out, but the darkness kept creeping in from every corner. He had to tell them. He had to thank them. He had to ask them why they would risk Juno for his stupid, sorry ass. He--

He was on the couch. The Deetz’s ugly as sin gray couch. He’d lost his sweater at some point, and was now wrapped up in sleep clothes that were too big to be Adam’s, and a thick quilted blanket that smelled so strongly of the attic that it made his chest ache. 

Lydia was kneeling next to the couch, arms folded on his chest and glaring. She wasn’t mad. 

“ _....hi... _ ” he croaked. 

Lydia winced. God, he must’ve sounded worse than usual. 

“Hi yourself, jerk,” she warbled, throwing her arms around his neck. 

And for the first time in what felt like decades, Beeltejuice felt, and it almost broke him. 

“ _ Sorry ‘bout the sweater, _ ” he choked. 

“Fuck the sweater,” said Lydia, leaning heavily on his chest. 

“ _ Sorry ‘bout Juno, _ ” he said, still choking. 

“Fuck. Juno.” she paused. “And because I can’t get enough of saying it: Fuck. Juno.”

Beeltejuice laughed, and it hurt, but he couldn’t stop. He laughed until he felt the ghosts of tears in his eyes, tears that he could no longer really make. He sobbed, throwing an arm over his face to hide it. 

“ _ S-shoulda lef’ me behind, _ ” he hugged her back, dragging her onto the couch. “ _ Th’ N’therworl’s no place for a buncha nice guys like you… _ ”

“Shut up, dumbass,” she said, voice hoarser than even his. “Like I’d ever leave my BFFFF Forever in that place.”

They didn’t say anything for the longest time. Before long, Beetlejuice woke up again, Lydia fast asleep right next to them, with another blanket thrown on top of the both of them. Before he could think to move, which he couldn’t even if he wanted to, he noticed Barbara and Adam, watching them from the armchair. Barbara was dozing against Adam’s side. Adam waved. 

“Go back to sleep,” Adam mouthed. 

Beeltejuice couldn’t remember a time when he wanted to kiss them both of them so senseless. If he could only move without sending shocks of pain through his drained body. If only. 

As if sensing his own thoughts, Barbara stretched, yawned, and stood to cross over to him. Her still-warm lips ghosted a kiss against his temple, and she adjusted the blankets to cocoon him so he couldn’t budge. A smart move. 

“Go. Back. To sleep,” she whispered. 

Warmed from the inside out, Beetlejuice slowly succumbed once more to the siren call of sleep. But not before he managed one not-quite-so-sarcastic comment. 

“ _ Thanks f’r bringin’ me home...” _

  
He’d meant to say back, not home. But, oh, the couch was so comfy and Lydia was still hugging him even in her sleep, and he was certain Barbara would correct him anyway. But as he dozed, he could've sworn he heard the ghost say  _ you’re welcome _ instead of tell him that he was wrong _.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Footnotes:   
> *He learned that the hard way back in 1873, when he got busted for haunting what he’d thought was an abandoned monastery at one point. Apparently nuns can sense demonic presence. If only they hadn’t taken vows of silence, he might’ve been able to get them to scream his name. But instead of screaming, they were more the take-action-ing kind of nuns. With access to a shit-ton of holy water. He used to be able to summon four extra arms at a time. But not anymore. 
> 
> \-------
> 
> @uppertories on tumblr


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